Spider-man is still the most marketable superhero there is. His toys, video games, comic books, and various other merch sells far better than the second, Batman. This may be part of why I started the series of Batman or Spider-man? The big problem with his marketability is that once the well really starts to run dry in the finances, they tend to lean on properties that show more returns. As a result, it feels like they rushed this movie out the door. They needed this success quickly, so story took a backseat to spectacle and fanservice. Whether a lot of it made any sense is apparently just not an issue. SPIDER SPOILERS!
How this needs to happen is going by the plotlines. Each of these plotlines go along the movie for as long as they need to be there. Once they have outlived their usefulness, they are discarded and never mentioned again. These can be storylines with severe repercussions on the characters and it can come and go as if it were nothing. This even goes into the territory of MCU's current state of affairs. Whether Tom Holland's Spider-man is a part of the Avengers at this point is very sketchy, but that's not really the movie's fault. The MCU itself is rather sketchy on such details in general.
The core of the problem with this movie lies with Jean Grey. A great deal of the faults in the story's morality and shifting focus boils down to the fact that Grey's overall plan was absolutely terrible. What she is after is her sister, as she was kidnapped by Damage Control and taken to a facility. The guy who is covering this up is not subtle, nor is his villainous intent. How Jean constantly attempts to break into Damage Control makes her out to be even worse than him. The first one that we see, which was her fourth attempt, is her taking control of some old lady's mind in order to drive a tank into the building to... break out... Scorpion.
Look, I understand that you need to keep a villain's true motive secret in order to make the plot unveil nearer the end, but this subversion adds nothing and wastes time. Scorpion becomes the most important character for the first few scenes of the movie only for him to be dropped from the plot like a sack of bricks. Peter has a spider DNA problem taking him over and makes him turn angry with less control over his power. So, he hospitalizes Scorpion and starts to think that, maybe something is wrong.
It's all just anxiety ridden for the audience, and not in a good way. Even with all of this technology in his apartment, Jean invades his home. Even when the movie tries to make her sympathetic, she invade's MJ's mind only to taunt him. Her over-powered abilities don't even make sense for Jean Grey in the first place. She was only an average telepath, leaning more on her telekinetic powers. Yet, when unleashed fully, Jean can apparently hold entire crowds of people in mental stasis for several square miles in every direction. Even at his most powerful, Professor X has shown that a feat like this would tax him terribly, yet Grey is doing it here while also in the primary climax with Spider-man. They have a sit down about their feelings... Seriously, it's as lame as it sounds. Then, Peter gets shot!!!
This is just the core problem with the movie. Not only are we supposed to show empathy for a girl who has shown no empathy for a single soul around her, taking over their minds like jumping through hoolah hoops, but now we need to see Peter obsess over his former life. MJ is caught up in all of this because Jean gleams his affections for her so now she's in terrible danger. Ned is a decent laugh every once in a while, but then we're reminded of his part in the script when he fangasms over "Black Widow" while she talks to Peter over video feed. I'm sorry, but no, I will never accept her as Black Widow and pulling me out of the experience of watching a movie to pass that over the audience really just shows what they're trying to concentrate on.
So, these concentrated powers seem to come from his ineptitude to cope with the fact that MJ no longer has him in her life. Alright, well, this is probably not helped when MJ remembers Peter and still rebukes him. All of his fawning over her is not paid off, and we're left with the consolation prize of him reuniting with Ned instead. The powers? Oh, they just work themselves out. All of the biologically created webbing, new strength and stronger senses, he just learns to deal with it while fighting ninjas. The Hand's inclusion in this was... Yeah, it was dumb. The powers worked themselves out, giving hard questions as to whether it really needed so much screen time at all.
Oh, yeah! The Punisher! The Hulk! Who else can we cram into this movie? While the Frank's scenes were good because his chemistry with Spider-man is fun to watch, the Hulk was a severely mixed bag. Jean puts far more people in terrible danger as she takes over the Hulk's mind. His mind is supposed to be excruciatingly difficult to control, both for Banner's brilliance and the Hulk's raw, terrible anger making anyone attempting control recoil in terror. Here, though, total control. He even comes very close killing both Frank Castle and Peter in a rage. Then he gets back to normal and is carted away, once again, out of the movie for good.
This story is exhausting and terribly written. There is no pacing and it feels like there is no story in the first place. It takes forever for us to get into Jean's story and once we're in it, we want out! Her morals are so twisted and the fact that she got away scott free just makes this movie feel unfinished. The climax is marred with overdramatized near-death scenes. Tom Holland is good as Spidey, as usual, but it's just another film that loves to stomp on his face throughout the runtime. It really feels like this life didn't get a whole lot better by the end of it. Watching him fail upward gets old after a while, and it'd be nice if he got a few actual wins every so often. Bring in Mary Jane or Black Cat, give him someone to be happy with that isn't dragged from his past life. Sure, the movie was successful in the box office, but it's pretty obvious that this was a film that was meant to be forgotten. It's in that stale area where it's not quite as bad as Far From Home, but still wagging on the tale-end of the tier list. It'll rest with the mediocre likes of Across the Spider-verse and Amazing Spider-man. Virtua Web Dud.
